Titus Andronicus are back, in old scrappy form. Their last LP (2012's Local Business) was a bit too polished for my taste, Patrick Stickles' voice too pristine for his rough, champion-of-losers style. This sounds way more like the band that I (and pretty much everyone else) obsessed over when they put out the brilliant, drunken concept album The Monitor in 2010.

"Stranded (On My Own)" is the first in a series of 7" records the band is putting out starting next week, dubbed the Seven Seven Inches singles series. For the Brooklyn-dwellers catching their Shea Stadium show on July 14, they'll get this 7" for free, "Stranded" along with b-side "Sport" by Wicked Kind. It's a side project by Titus drummer Eric Harm and bassist Julian Veronesi (who replaced founding member Ian Graetzer after the Monitor tour).